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There’s an Emmanuel Macron-shaped shadow hovering over this week’s U.S. go to by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.
In distinction to the French president — who in an interview with POLITICO tried to place a long way between the U.S. and Europe in any future confrontation with China over Taiwan and known as for strengthening the Continent’s “strategic autonomy” — the Polish chief is underlining the vital significance of the alliance between America and Europe, not least as a result of his nation is certainly one of Kyiv’s strongest allies within the conflict with Russia.
“As an alternative of constructing strategic autonomy from the US, I suggest a strategic partnership with the US,” he mentioned earlier than flying to Washington.
Within the U.S. capital, Morawiecki continued together with his under-the-table kicks on the French president.
“I see no various, and we’re completely on the identical wavelength right here, to constructing a good nearer alliance with the People. If nations to the west of Poland perceive this much less, it’s most likely due to historic circumstances,” he mentioned on Tuesday in Washington.
Not like France, which has spent a long time bristling at Europe’s reliance on the U.S. for its safety, Poland is likely one of the Continent’s keenest American allies. Warsaw has pushed onerous for years for U.S. troops to be stationed on its territory, and plenty of of its current arms contracts have gone to American firms. It signed a $1.4 billion deal earlier this yr to purchase a second batch of Abrams tanks, and has additionally agreed to spend $4.6 billion on superior F-35 fighter jets.
“I’m glad that this proposal for a good deeper strategic partnership is one thing that finds such fertile floor right here in the US, as a result of we all know that there are numerous ideas formulated by others in Europe, ideas that create extra threats, extra query marks, extra unknowns,” Morawiecki mentioned. “Poland is making an attempt to take care of probably the most commonsense coverage primarily based on a detailed alliance with the US inside the framework of the European Union, and that is the most effective path for Poland.”
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Poland has turn into certainly one of Ukraine’s most essential allies, and entry to its roads, railways and airports is essential in funneling weapons, ammunition and different support to Ukraine.
That’s helped shift perceptions of Poland — seen earlier than the conflict as an more and more marginal member of the Western membership due to its points with violating the rule of regulation, right into a key nation of the NATO alliance.
Warsaw additionally sees the Russian assault on Ukraine as justifying its long-held suspicion of its historic foe, and it hasn’t been shy in pointing the finger at Paris and Berlin for being unsuitable concerning the risk posed by the Kremlin.
“Previous Europe believed in an settlement with Russia, and previous Europe failed,” Morawiecki mentioned in a joint information convention with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. “However there’s a new Europe — Europe that remembers what Russian communism was. And Poland is the chief of this new Europe.”
That’s why Macron’s feedback have been seized on by Warsaw.
“I completely don’t agree with President Macron. We consider that extra America is required in Europe … We wish extra cooperation with the U.S. on a partnership foundation,” Marcin Przydacz, a international coverage adviser to Polish President Andrzej Duda, informed Poland’s Radio Zet, including that the strategic autonomy thought pushed by Macron “has the purpose of slicing hyperlinks between Europe and the US.”
Whereas Poland is eager on European nations hitting NATO’s purpose of spending no less than 2 % of gross home product on protection — a goal that solely seven alliance members, together with Poland, however not France and Germany, are assembly — and has no drawback with them build up navy industries, it doesn’t need to weaken ties with the U.S., mentioned Sławomir Dębski, head of the state-financed Polish Institute of Worldwide Affairs.
He warned that Macron’s talks of distancing Europe from America within the occasion of a battle with China “threatens to interrupt up the EU, which is towards the pursuits not solely of Poland, but additionally of most European nations.”
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